“What we are doing is really not that technically revolutionary,” explained Elayperuma of his buzzworded Solar Liberator, whose built-in inverter, backup battery and control electronics are bundled into 500w ($699), 100w ($199) and 25w ($79) variants for your home, vehicle and head. “We shifted much of the control-circuit management to software using the built-in micro-processor, a clear advantage that would have otherwise required hardwired circuits. This gives us incredible flexibility; we can keep improving system performance, reliability and efficiency by improving firmware.”

While it seems utterly obvious that we need greater integration and mobility for our solar-powered future, especially with global warming’s exponential fury coming down on us fast(er), we’re still way behind the curve. Even if perception was reality, as the so-called free market wishes it was, solar power still conjures images of shiny stuff on rooftops, despite decades of advances. Pulling those panels off of the roofs and onto our other stuff still sadly reads like science fiction. However it enters or leaves that market, depending on how events unfold, Solar Liberator’s efforts to free solar from the confines of the roof will at the least proudly carry the banner for a more portable utopia.

“Solar Liberator can do for solar devices what the iPhone did for smartphones, by making things really consumer friendly,” Elayperuma said. “The shift from traditional dumbphones to smartphones, from mainframe computers to PCs and mobile computing, is inevitable for solar power. The market is ready for a self-contained device that does not need to be constrained to rooftops.”

Elayperuma and crew have been working on the Solar Liberator for two years. Once the price of photovoltaics inevitably declined as solar adoption heated back up — after an artificial lull, courtesy of both governments and industries cashing in on doomed, so-called natural gas — the Solar Liberators “saw the need to make the entire solar power solution affordable on a mass scale,” Elayperuma explained. And until humans are able to spray or lay nontoxic flexisolar panels on whatever they want, from a forehead to a dashboard to a laptop to an earthship, integrated gadgetry like the Solar Liberator is where we are and where we are still going.

“This is definitely the future,” Elayperuma added. “We can be a catalyst for bringing about mass scale adoption of solar energy, as we shift the focus from industrial to consumer solutions. Everyone will be in control of their energy needs, portable or residential. That is our vision.”